This is a shocking choice for my first album review because it is widely known that I openly dislike Napalm Death as a band. I don't even like their first album Scum. Now all you grinders out there who just recoiled in horror and vomited on themselves, hear me out. I tried to like them. I did. I could never get into them. Not even "FETO" held my interest. And everything after that just seemed liked varying levels of death metal rather than Grindcore. Don't get me wrong, I recognize Shane Embury's genius and I recognize that Napalm Death has influenced the Grindcore genre as a whole. I mean I'm not insane, but still. Napalm Death is a perfect example of a Grindcore band for metal heads who don't like Grindcore. Jokingly I've refered to them as the Metallica of grind: everybody likes their early stuff, they've influenced scores of extreme metal bands, they've been going for four decades and fans are steadfast.
All that aside, this is the best Napalm Death album I've ever heard. Highly decent for their 15th studio album. This is the most venomous I've heard the band sound. I'm shocked at how good Apex Predator - Easy Meat is. I'm very tempted to buy this album. (I can't believe it either.)
Like with any grind album, we'll start with the most important thing -the drums. This isn't a blast fest, by no means. They are there, but the majority of these songs are just straight punk as fuck fast. Accompany this with the thrashy-punk and discordant riffs that are being throw around here and we're in good shape. And when the blasts do come into play, they're blistering and sharp. Very modern sounding blasts instead of the choppy, alternating snare clomps that are typical for some metal/grind acts. All this packaged in a professional studio mix. This album is well produced without being overproduced.
Moving on, my second main concern with Napalm Death, besides their copacity to blast, is their vocals. I've never liked the vocals on any of Napalm Death's earlier releases and I certainly have never liked Barney Greenway's vocals. His past efforts only rang as strained, constipated grunts to my biased ears. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Barney's vocals have improved a great deal. Fluid and consistent, somewhere between Shane McLachlan and Oderus Urungus' gruff roars. And for the record, whoever is doing the backing highs is on fucking point.
The only down side to this album are songs like the titular "Apex Predator - Easy Meat." Clean vocals accompanied by a Gregorian chant/pirate ditty/that troll song from the 1986 movie Troll style of music. There's a couple of these songs on this album that I'm sure fulfill some artistic vision, but I found completely unnecessary. The cockney tinged clean vocals remind me of early 80's British anarcho punk. Which makes sense since Napalm Death originally sprang from the Crass Records scene. Must be a British thing.
All in all, Napalm Death seemed to have returned to their punk roots instead of the groove metal they've been passing off as grind since the 90's. This is their stab at keeping up with today's modern Grindcore, much like Brutal Truth's End Time. Not bad.
FFO: Extreme Noise Terror, Brutal Truth, Terrorizer, Phobia
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